Reeves caught his breath. If there was a death worse than snakebites, he’d just found it. Then the cable around his wrist went taut and gave Reeves a hard yank. The force pulled him horizontally forward, in a wide arc towards the base of the pyramid. Unfortunately, he was still going to hit the spikes. The length of cable was simply too long.
Reeves twisted sideways, trying to make himself as narrow as possible, and then held his breath, waiting for death. Strangely, it didn’t come. Somehow, Reeves managed to slide between the tips of the spikes. He slammed into the base of the pyramid with a thud. The impact knocked his breath out, and for a while it was all Reeves could do just to hang on to the cable. Then, gradually, he began to pull himself up.
By the time Reeves got to an angle where he could see the tunnel in the far wall, Victor and his henchmen were already gone. No doubt they assumed he was already dead. Reeves climbed up onto the base of the pyramid and then began the ascent up the stone steps towards the altar. A quick glance across the chamber told him there was no way out. He couldn’t navigate his way across the spikes, and he had no means of restoring the cable to its proper position.
He settled down next to the altar and thought it over for a while. And he ate his lunch. Reeves wasn’t about to let his lunch go to waste. The cold turkey sandwich was stale, and the lettuce had wilted, but that didn’t bother him. Reeves had eaten far worse in order to stay alive. It was too bad he hadn’t thought to bring a Coke. Reeves loved a good sugary cola. Julia wouldn’t have allowed it, though. She expressly forbade junk food in her presence, and especially in front of the orphans. That was why Reeves had a secret stash of Coke and candy bars that no one knew about in the basement, where he stored some of his weapons. Well, maybe Gabriel knew about it. He never could tell with that kid.
After he’d finished his meal, Reeves stepped up to the altar. On a hunch, he pressed the center switch back in place. It instantly reset, and the floor rose up to its proper position. Unfortunately, the vipers were still there. Reeves pursed his lips. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s see what you snakes have got…”
He pulled the cable back together and removed it from the spike embedded in the stairs below the altar. He stood back, estimating the distance to the escape tunnel. The cable wasn’t nearly long enough. But he had another idea.
Reeves pulled the grappling gun from his bag and reset it with a fresh anchor. He attached the cable and then shot it up into the ceiling. He yanked on it a few times, testing it. The anchor seemed solid, but he couldn’t be sure if it would hold his weight. Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure was to swing, and if he did that, he’d be right back to the viper hazard.
“Not much choice,” he mumbled. He threw his backpack over his shoulders, grabbed the cable with both hands, and jumped…
Julia and the shadowfriends had vanished without a trace. As soon Reeves got back to the Albatross, he hailed the mansion on the COM. He received no response. Having no way to track Julia, and no other means of contacting the estate, he had no choice but to leave. Throughout the flight home, he made repeated efforts to contact Mr. Oglesby or the children, all to no avail.
He arrived at the airport midmorning and drove his Hummer straight to the estate. Nothing could have prepared him for what he found. The first thing he noticed was that the front gates were standing open. The gate controls had been busted open and hotwired. It looked like a professional job. At the top of the drive, Reeves found the horses out of the barn and running wild across the estate. All of the windows along the front of the mansion had been broken out, and the doors were hanging open. The roof over the kitchen appeared to have fire damage.
Reeves drew his .45 as he entered the main hall. It was force of habit alone, because he knew the weapon wouldn’t do him any good. He wasn’t carrying lead bullets. Reeves always kept his pistol loaded with the special acrylic R9-11 rounds designed for fighting shadowcreatures. Reeves hadn’t shot an actual bullet at an actual human since leaving the army.
Reeves found his collection of medieval armor and weapons strewn about the main hall. Julia’s precious renaissance paintings were torn down and shredded, and the furniture had been vandalized. The kitchen was in shambles. The library was demolished. The fireplace was twisted open, the hinged door broken, the hidden entrance to D.A.S. standing wide open for all the world to see.
Reeves set his jaw and stepped inside the elevator. At that point, he was hoping some shadowfriends were still in the mansion, because he wanted to kill something. When he got to the basement, Reeves instead found a rotund, half-bald man with octagonal-shaped eyeglasses standing at one of the desks. The man looked up, his face awash with fear. The look passed as he recognized Reeves.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” he said breathlessly.
“Phineas,” Reeves said. “What happened here?”
Phineas was a D.A.S. associate, a knowledgeable professor who’d studied the Shadow for decades. He had written the authoritative journal on the subject, The Book of Shadows. Though he knew about the Shadow and D.A.S., Phineas rarely got involved in the daily business of D.A.S.
Reeves eyed the old writer up and down and then looked the place over. The shadowfriends had damaged most of the computer systems, and probably stolen the hard drives. They had cracked one of the giant monitors on the wall.
“I got a cell phone alert night before last. This is what I found when I got here. I’ve been trying to get the network running, at least enough to track down Julia.”
Reeves’ eyebrows shot up. “Did you find her?”
“Not yet. The network is back online, but the antennae are broken. We have no satellite feeds.”
“What about the orphans?”
“Not a clue,” said Phineas. “They could be anywhere. It’s possible they escaped and hid somewhere, or…” he trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
Reeves returned his pistol to his holster at the small of his back, and ran a hand through his thick, black hair. “I’ll get up on the roof and fix the antenna,” he said. “You focus on the computer systems.”
“Of course.”
Two hours later, they had the network up and running. Phineas started a scan to locate the tracking device installed in Julia’s body. Meanwhile, Reeves accessed the security system. He found the surveillance footage from the estate’s video cameras on a backup hard drive that was hidden in the safe room. He hooked it up and then sent the image to the large screen at the front of the room.
“Oh my,” Phineas murmured as the video screen came to life. He slumped into a chair. They watched in horror as the shadowcreatures stormed the estate and broke into the mansion. They saw the entire scene, including Gabriel and Jodi’s heroic fight in the library, and the death of Mr. Oglesby.
Reeves watched the replay with steely eyes. His jaw fell open when Starling and her commandos arrived on the scene.
“What the…?”
“Do you know this woman?” Phineas said.
“Not yet,” said Reeves, “but I know who she works for. And when I find her, she’d better have a bloody good explanation for all of this.”
Chapter 25
Commander Starling was in her office when Byron called the next morning. She picked up the phone with a smile. “Good morning, Byron. How is your little admirer doing?”
“Jodi?” Byron said. “I was actually calling to ask about her.”
Starling sat upright. “What do you mean?”
“Well, she didn’t show up for her afternoon classes yesterday. I thought she might have gone to see you, but when she didn’t show up this morning I got worried.”
“What do you mean she didn’t show up?”
“She’s not here,” Byron said.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Yesterday, just before lunch.”
Starling felt a surge of panic and she forced it back. She’s just a kid, she thought. Probably exploring the base… “I’ll look into it.”
&
nbsp; “There was one other thing,” Byron added. “Some of the students saw a wolf on the campus yesterday. I’m not sure if that means anything to you.”
“A wolf?” Starling echoed. “How could a wolf possibly get onto the Academy campus?”
“I don’t know. They said it jumped the fence and ran off.”
Starling hung up the phone. Instantly it started ringing again. She gazed at the caller ID. This time it was Hank’s extension. She bit her lip as she picked up the phone.
“Good morning, Commander. I’m just checking to see if Pete will be coming in today.”
Starling glanced at the clock. It was almost nine a.m. “He’s not there?” she said.
“No, ma’am. Usually he’s here bright and early. I thought he might be with you-”
Starling slammed the phone down. She leaned forward, pressing her knuckles to her forehead. She’d only been slightly worried by Jodi’s absence. Many things could have explained it. The girl might have gotten bored with classes and decided to stay home, or she might have been sick. She could have been wandering around the base… Or, off the base, Starling thought.
But it wasn’t just Jodi. It was Pete, too. One missing kid might have been explainable. Two was a conspiracy. Three… “Gabriel,” she said. This time, her heart skipped a beat. It didn’t matter what happened to the other two. Gabriel was the important one. Starling almost had a panic attack when she realized she hadn’t seen him in twenty-four hours, either.
Two minutes later, Starling was in the children’s suite. She found Pete sitting on the living room sofa, eating popcorn and watching cartoons. “What’s going on here?” she demanded.
Pete looked up at her with starry eyes. “Who are you?” he said.
Starling was baffled. “Pete, you know who I am!” Pete shrugged and turned his attention back to the TV.
“Where is Jodi?” Starling said.
Pete looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled and said, “Who’s Jodi?”
Starling snarled as she rushed up the stairs. She flung Jodi’s bedroom door open and scanned the room. Jodi was not there. She checked the next room and found Gabriel’s room empty as well. She rushed back downstairs, and found Pete just the way she’d left him. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him, frowning. Pete looked up at her.
“Want some popcorn?” he said, offering her the bowl.
“I’m gonna get court-martialed for this,” she muttered.
Chapter 26
Gabriel jumped as the troll’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. Instinctively, he danced back, raising his fists to defend himself. The hideous creature was about six feet tall, with long sinewy arms and moss-green skin. It carried a long spear with a tip made of sharpened stone and it was dressed in crude clothing made from some sort of canvas material. Two long fangs protruded from its lower jaw, curling out over its upper lip. It wore some sort of bone piercing stuck through its nose.
To Gabriel’s surprise, the creature didn’t attack him. Instead, the troll put a finger to its lips and made a “shhh” noise. Then, in a deep, gravelly voice it whispered, “Come, if you want to live.”
Gabriel’s jaw dropped. He had run across hundreds of shadowcreatures while working with D.A.S., and to the best of his knowledge, none of them had humanlike intellect. They were all monsters of one variety or another. But this creature… Not only had the troll not attacked him, but it had spoken to him, like a human. And it seemed to be friendly. Of course, Gabriel was smart enough to know that this might be a trap of some sort. But for what purpose? The troll already had the jump on him … it could have killed him easily if it wanted to.
“Who are you?” Gabriel whispered.
“Not safe,” the troll answered. “You come.”
The troll moved quietly through the brush and disappeared into the shadows. Gabriel waited a moment, wrestling with his thoughts. He glanced back at the army encampment that surrounded the Black Palace, and the fleet of airships hovering overhead. It was almost too much to wrap his head around.
Aldron, the man who was supposed to be Gabriel’s teacher, had apparently turned out to be a shadowfriend, maybe even a Shadowlord. The small army the Shadow had been building was in fact a very large army, and they were almost ready to march… but to where? Gabriel still didn’t know what their plans were, except that somehow the Shadowlords wanted to get Starling’s clockwork machine and use it to stop the movement of the planets…
And that was when he fully understood. He remembered Aldron telling him about how the Shadow world used to be part of the real world. Gabriel could even remember Jodi telling him something similar, once. That was what the machine was for. Aldron wanted to merge the two worlds back together, and he planned to do it in such a way that Niburu, the large red planet in the Shadow world, would block out the sun, trapping the earth in eternal shadow. That was what the shadowfriends had been working on all this time. And they wanted the statues because somehow they powered the machine…
“Come!” the troll whispered impatiently. Gabriel abandoned his thoughts. There was simply too much for him to absorb, and he needed time to think. He turned and followed the troll into the shadows, up the steep mountain terrain and into the dense forest along the ridge.
The creature stepped from shadow to shadow so quickly and quietly across the dry grass that Gabriel had a hard time keeping pace. Several times the troll paused, listening intently to the forest around them. Each time he became so still that his body seemed to melt into the background. His limbs became tree branches, his torso a trunk, and his head looked like a patch of shadow. The optical illusion was so powerful that Gabriel had to blink to keep the creature in focus.
Gabriel had little idea of what time it was, but it seemed that several hours passed as they traveled. The woods grew deep and dark, and Gabriel found himself drawing on the Shadow powers to keep himself going. He pulled the energy into his body the way that Aldron had taught him, using it to maintain his strength. Another benefit he noticed was that his eyes adapted to the darkness. The inky blacks faded to dusky charcoal and the sky overhead faded into a deep midnight blue.
The first time Gabriel did this, the troll paused in his step. He was several yards ahead of Gabriel, his back turned, his lean statuesque form rippling with muscles. He twisted his head slightly, glimpsing Gabriel over his shoulder out of the corner of his eye, and then made a hmmph sound. That was it. Instantly, he was back on the run.
Some time later, they came to a narrow wooden bridge across a wide, slow-moving stream. Gabriel eyed the span suspiciously, throwing cautious glances this way and that, but the troll nonchalantly strolled forward. “Come,” he said in a gruff voice. “Almost there.”
“Where are we going?”
The troll slowed to a walk, allowing Gabriel to catch up with him. “Village, ahead,” he said. “There we speak. You must learn many things.”
“Hold on,” Gabriel said. He stopped in the middle of the trail. “Why are you taking me to your village? Who are you?”
The troll turned to face him. “Questions later,” he said. “Come now. You must follow.” With that, he turned and started walking again. Gabriel’s jaw tightened with frustration, but he followed. He was beginning to think that the troll didn’t understand what was going on. He wanted to explain that important things were happening; that he needed to get home and help his friends. Unfortunately, the troll didn’t seem inclined to listen.
As promised, a mile up the trail the woods gave way to a small village of thatched mud huts and tree houses in the canopy overhead, connected by long rope bridges and swings. The place bustled with activity, and the trolls in the village paid little heed as Gabriel followed his companion through their midst, towards the center of the village. At least a dozen elder trolls sat around a stone fire pit right in the middle of the village. The old women were sewing and cooking, the old men carving small pieces of wood with bone-handled knives and repairing hand tools made of stone and wood. They all wat
ched Gabriel silently as he passed by.
At last, the troll stopped at a small mud hut nestled under the tree branches next to a stream. “Kawaka!” he said in his strange, guttural language. “The man-child!” Then he stomped off to the nearest tree where he leapt up and grabbed one of the lower branches, and swung up into the foliage. He scurried up the trunk in a flash and Gabriel blinked as the troll vanished among the leaves and branches.
A rustling noise drew his gaze back to the hut. The leather flap that stood for a door had been pulled aside by an old, shriveled looking creature that appeared to be a female troll. She had long white hair that made a startling contrast against her green skin, and she wore a necklace of bones around her throat. She wore a dress and shawl made from leather and the same dense fabric that the others wore, and she leaned on an old stick like a cane.
“Well, move it,” she said in a voice almost as gravelly as the first troll’s. “You waiting for a party?”
“I, uh…” Gabriel stammered. “What?”
“Ah, it begins,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Shall we call you your highness?” she said in a sarcastic tone.
Gabriel stared, confused. “I’m… I’m uh, Gabriel,” he said awkwardly.
“Of course, your highness,” she said cynically.
“But… I don’t understand. What do you-”
“Oh quiet, man-child. You’re dumb as a human.”
“But I am a human.”
“Aha! You admit it. What fool chose a human to be the chosen one?”
Shadow Rising (Shadow Born Trilogy Book 2) Page 13
